


A Dream is But Itself a Shadow

by gingercinderella



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-31
Updated: 2018-08-31
Packaged: 2019-07-05 01:01:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15853029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingercinderella/pseuds/gingercinderella
Summary: Helo's seen his soulmates dreams his whole life. The fact that they were about the Fleet totally didn't influence why he joined to be a raptor pilot.He expected the dreams to stop after the world ended. They never did.





	A Dream is But Itself a Shadow

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Hamlet. Pretty out of context but ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Helo had never put much thought into his soulmate. He knew he had one, had since he was little and started getting the dreams. Flashes of things that didn’t make sense, not that his own dreams did anyways. But the same man in a fleet uniform popped up time and time again, whom Helo did not recognize and when he woke couldn’t recall his face. As he grew up, the dreams of Vipers and Battlestars only became more popular.

He didn’t go to the Academy because of those dreams, he told himself repeatedly. But it wasn’t as if thinking his soulmate might be in the fleet hurt his decision. He never looked for his soulmate, never told anyone about the dreams, and moved on with his life.

And at this point? His life felt like he was moving through a dream, going through the motions of a world he had abandoned when he gave up his seat on the Raptor to allow Baltar to take his place. Everyone regarded him as a little off since he got back, and he ended up in the rec room at odd hours more often than not. Movement at the doorway in the otherwise still and silent rec room made Helo look up from his glass.

“Drinking alone?” Apollo had that fixed, controlled face on that Helo had never quite unraveled, not that he had found much time to think about the CAG.

“Just about everyone I know is dead or Kara.”

He wasn’t special, he knew that, but it didn’t make it sting any less. He had watched the vast majority of his closest friends die in the air, their Mark VII’s shut down and used as easy target practice. Shortly thereafter he had held onto only the tiniest hope that the Galactica was out there somewhere, that the people he knew lived on.

So it wasn’t surprising or unique that his drinking buddies didn’t make it.

“Sorry. Lt Agathon, right?”

“As if you don’t know the only new pilot on this ship in a year. But Helo is fine.” He’d been back what, two weeks? The first few days had been a shitshow of Kara facing the fact that she’d mutinied for a president who was now in the brig without any ally. Apollo had certainly seen him in the halls, but the guy was still the CAG, and had just not bothered to talk with him. It’s not like they had the time for lengthy introductions when their lives were perpetually an inch from falling apart.

Apollo snagged a glass from behind the bar and took a seat, pushing his glass towards the other man. Helo took the hint and poured him some.

“I haven’t had whiskey since the last time I was in here.”

“I haven’t either.” Apollo’s smile was almost cheeky, and Helo smiled back at the bad joke. When had he last smiled? Maybe when he saw Kara at the museum, in that brief moment before she’d seen Sharon and shot the Cylon without hesitation, before Helo could do a damn thing. But he was- he was here. He was drinking alone, in the rec room, on the Galactica, looking up at his new CAG.

“Not sure that’s a fair comparison, seeing as you’ve been able to be here in the last few months and I haven’t.”

“What’s fair in this world anymore?”

“Ain’t that the frakking truth.”

They clinked their glasses and sipped silently.

“Last time I saw you, you had the biggest lollipop and I wanted to ask the CAG why he didn’t tell you to knock that shit off, but it really wasn’t my job.”

“Would you tell me to knock it off?”

“If I was CAG then? Yeah. I don’t know now.”

“You pull the stick outta your ass in the last few months or would you just make an exception for me?” The alcohol had Helo feeling loose, had him cocky and sure that this wouldn’t land him in the brig. He’d miraculously avoided hack despite having been with a known Cylon, it was stupid to push his luck too far, but the teasing slipped out of his mouth regardless. He smiled like he wasn’t concerned.

Apollo scowled back and then laughed, his face transforming into something welcoming and warm for the first time that Helo had seen. “You saw me for two minutes and decided that?”

“You looked like such a frakking prick.” This guy was his CAG, he needed to shut up. But he felt confident from the drink- or was it just being around Apollo? He’d certainly never said any of this shit to his last CAG.

“I was stressed.”

“I’ll toast to that.”

Helo poured them both another shot or so, and their fingers brushed against the other’s as they grabbed their glasses back. He was drunker than he’d thought, or lonelier than he thought, if even touching fingers made him feel a thrill of electricity zip from his hand through his whole body. If Lee felt the same, he didn’t show it, and Helo ignored it.

The small bottle didn’t have that many drinks in it, after all, and after one more glass each they were nearly at the bottom of Helo’s short supply. He nearly didn’t want to leave, didn’t want to face being in the dark of his rack and face the memories if they threatened to bubble up. The image of Sharon, bleeding out in his arms, came unwittingly to his mind, and he could nearly feel himself blanch.

“You alright?” Lee’s voice was kind and concerned and Helo nodded sharply. “I think you ought to get some sleep, lieutenant,” he suggested, not even a real order, but he nodded again all the same. He had to get to it sooner or later.

Helo pushed up from his chair and nodded again. “Good night, Apollo,” he said, trying to compose himself even though he was sure he failed at it.

“Good night, Helo,” Lee answered softly.

Helo’s dreams that night were more bizarre than usual. The old dreams had never stopped on Caprica, and he wasn’t sure if they should have- few enough people shared their soulmate’s dreams that he never got a chance to ask around, or find out if the dreams should have stopped if his soulmate died, and there was no one left to ask. The dreams now featured a hulking ship, shot down time and time again set against the usual backdrop of trees and paths and stars and dreamy nonsense.

When he woke in the morning, he shook off his hangover and pushed the dreams out of his mind and got back to his life.

 

* * *

 

 

Meeting for drinks became a common occurrence. Somehow they seemed to both have free time when few others did, so it was easier to sit and talk. Apollo made the flight schedule, so Helo never mentioned it but it felt more than just happenstance that their timing was perfect for the kind of chats he wouldn’t have when the rec room was full.

“I watched her die. Held her in my arms,” Helo said once, his voice quiet.

Apollo stared at him, his face blank. Helo grimaced back and looked down at his hands instead, folded on the table. Lee shouldn’t have to hear him mourn for the same Cylon that tried to kill his father, and Helo knew that it couldn’t be easy to listen, but Lee didn’t tell him to stop.

And gods, he didn’t have anyone else on this ship that he wanted to talk to about this. He’d usually go to Kara for his shit, but she had been the one to do the killing. “Kara had shot before I could stop her and- frak. There wasn’t a thing I could do but hold her.”

From what he’d heard, Lee had watched the other Sharon shoot his father and hadn’t been able to do a thing but hold onto his father. Their lives ran in the strangest parallels, but for now all Helo could think about was his own breaths, still coming slow and even, and his hands which were still folded carefully on the table.

Lee reached across the table and put his hand on Helo’s, giving him an encouraging squeeze. That same jolt of electricity passed between them, and he was stone cold sober this time. He ignored it all the same.

“I was so powerless that day,” Lee said after a while, breaking the silence that had settled like a heavy blanket, comforting and warm but stifling all the same, between them. “I was on the Galactica, unable to do a damn thing, when they arrested the president. And then when she shot him… I couldn’t do anything but try to hold him. He was bleeding out on the console and all I could do was try to get him to look at me.”

Helo debated looking up at Lee- would he see that same blank stare as before? Something passionate and emotional he wasn’t ready to face?

The Lords of Kobol wanted their children to be happy, wanted them to find the one whom they belonged with. If he and Lee were the perfect pair, the match that would complete the other, the Lords had a hell of a sense of humor. It took the end of the world for the pair of them to even speak to each other. Helo had fallen in love with the same Cylon that had attempted to kill Lee’s father. There was no poetry in that, only layers of hurt and confusion that pushed them apart.

The Lords left many avenues to find that person, but did not make it easy. He had heard this from mystics growing up, and again when he had spoken about the dreams, just once, to a priest during his time at the Academy. She had reassured him that if it were meant to be, it would be. He’d shrugged that off and regretted the time he spent going to the priest when he could have been studying or sleeping or being with friends. It was just tough, sometimes, when his soulmate was struggling, the dreams frustrated and confused, and he could do nothing at all.

The sound of pilots joking around, yelling and shoving eachother, came through the hall and into the rec room. Lee pulled his hand back quickly and Helo looked up in time to see Lee composing his face into a casual smile, the pilots barging into a room that all of them had equal rights to use but Helo so completely wished they had waited another ten minutes to start a game of triad.

“I think it’s time we both hit our racks,” Lee said, getting up, and Helo followed suit.

He wanted these moments to last forever, when they didn’t have to talk and they could just be, when Helo’s mind could wander and stray just a little too close to thinking that Lee was the one. Who’d dreamt of Fleet uniforms and Vipers his whole life, that the figure in the dreams who he had wanted to make proud for so long was Adama.

But their lives weren’t like that. People didn’t just find their soulmate, not in a time like this. Helo wasn’t going to get so lucky.

The moments were good enough, without trying to force Lee to be the soulmate he had given up on long ago.

The moments had to be good enough.

 

 

* * *

 

“Hey, Captain,” Helo said softly, afraid to disturb the other people in sickbay who were sleeping. He’d be kicked out by Cottle for sure if he did- he shouldn’t be here in the first place, not when it was so late, but Helo had been terrified. He had to see Apollo.

Lee smiled at him, his eyes droopy from pain meds. “Hey there, Karl. Wondered when you’d turn up.” He gestured with his unbandaged arm to the chair beside the bed, which Helo was quick to take. “Kara came through already and so did dear ol’ dad, just a matter of time til I got to see you.”

He tried to recall if Lee had called him Karl before- certainly Lieutenant Agathon, or Helo, but never Karl. Lee would usually consider that too informal, too familiar. And for all their late nights, they were still formal with one another. Helo tried to convince himself that was fine the way it was.

But his first name was still nice to hear, even in circumstances like this.

Lee’s voice was scratchy and weary but there was a warmth that sparked in Helo from his name being said like that, in his voice. It felt comfortingly like the feeling when their hands touched all over again.  This was far from the first time Helo has wondered if Lee could be his soulmate, but this moment was the worst time to be reminded of it. Not when Lee was bandaged up, the sheet on the bed covering what Helo knew were the worst of the burns from the Viper fire.  

From his seat, he didn’t know what to say or what to acknowledge, afraid to look at Lee and scared to look away.  There was nothing he could have done about the accident, nothing he could do to make it better now, but he hadn’t been able to sleep and he needed to check to see how Lee was. He’d heard that the CAG was hurt as hell and alive, but the hearsay hadn’t been good enough. Not when they were… close, as they were.

 “You still with me?”

“Of course,” Karl answered, smiling at Lee best as he could.

“I know it’s-“

“You don’t have to apologize.”

Was he stilted? Acting like he didn’t want to be here? Their usual easy conversation was off, but it could just as easily be a product of their setting. At least Helo could pass it off as such.

“I feel like the CAG oughta keep from dumb mistakes and oughta apologize for making you drag your ass all the way down here to see me.”

“I wouldn’t miss it.” Helo wouldn’t miss seeing Lee if he wanted, wouldn’t stay away. “As long as you want me here, I’ll keep my ass close.”

“Mm, you better. I need some entertainment.”

Helo tried not to dwell on that, but his eyes were drawn down to Lee’s fingers inching towards him. He reached back tentatively and took his hand, and Lee squeezed his hand with surprising strength, considering.

“I was wondering for a moment there if you didn’t want to come see me,” he admitted. “Been almost a whole day in here. I think. Time is hard when Cottle’s giving me the good stuff.” Lee nodded over to the IV drip with a stiff neck, his movement too jilted for Helo’s liking.

Helo had to wonder if they were straying into territory of what Lee wouldn’t say if he wasn’t doped up. “You sure you want to talk, Apollo?”

“I always want to talk to you.”

“If you say so.”

Even with the sentiment, Lee fell silent and Helo took that as a cue to shut up. It was comforting enough just to be here, and he hoped Lee felt as much. The hospital was nowhere near as quiet as the rec room could get, but it was quiet enough, just beeps and soft conversations past the blue paper curtains. This was familiar, even if it was so very wrong that Lee was so hurt.

Some people thought that if people were meant to find their soulmate, they’d just have that person’s name written on them. That if they didn’t have that particular sign, that the Lords didn’t truly mean for them to meet their soulmate.  Some people believed that they had outgrown soulmates as a society; with people flung across twelve colonies, the chance that you’d meet yours was so slim. Why bother? They ignored the dreams they got from their soulmates, or the disorienting moments they might wake briefly in their soulmate’s body, or the way their eye color changed every now and then. The seemingly random words that appeared that could be their soulmate’s first words to them, or their last.

Helo had never had strong feelings either way on the issue, besides the one moment of weakness in Academy when he was worried for his soulmate, before he shook it off and tried to remind him that there wasn’t a thing he could do. His life was going to be too busy, too nomadic, for a soulmate, even if he’d always been sure that his other half was in the Fleet as well.

But gods, now he had plenty of feelings when he looked down at the dozing CAG who deserved all the best, deserved to be happy. He wanted to know if they were the two parts of the same heart that were almost fairy tales, stories he’d heard about a friend of a friend from home, but the kind of thing he never dared hoped for himself. He certainly didn’t have time to dream of meeting his soulmate when he dreamed about the man’s life.

He rose to leave, slipping his hand from Lee’s which had gone slack, and the other man’s eyes cracked open.

“Stay?” He asked, pouting just a little in a way Helo was sure had to be unintentional. It was adorable, nonetheless, and effective, even if Lee hadn’t tried to hold onto his hand.

“Of course.”

He sat back down and Lee closes his eyes just as fast, slipping right back to sleep.

It wasn’t long before Helo nodded off as well, leaned back in the chair awkwardly to keep his hand in Lee’s.

His own dreams revolved around Lee, sitting on a shore with him somewhere full of other people, playing pyramid as Vipers swooped in to take the ball.

The dreams he received, after his own had faded, were fiery and bewildering, almost like the dreams he’d had when he was hopped up on pain meds after twisting his ankle during his Academy days. A small cockpit, the stars spinning wildly around, the bright fire disorienting as hell. The nightmare faded away to a gentler scene, a moonlit beach with a pyramid ball discarded next to him. From the perspective Helo viewed the dream, he saw himself stretched out on a blanket, looking out at the waves. In the dream, he dropped onto the towel as well, their arms right against eachothers’.

He'd never been able to tell who people were in the dreams, before.

If he had any question of whether Lee was his soulmate, it was gone when Cottle shook him awake and told him to leave. He looked down at Lee, who’d asked so gently for him to stay, but there was no way around the doc. Helo was exhausted from a long day of duty and he needed sleep desperately, so if he couldn’t get it here he’d have to drag himself back to his rack for it. He gave Lee’s hand a pat before he left, but he didn’t dare wake the other, not when he needed rest so much and even if Lee didn’t look peaceful, exactly, he seemed calm at least.

Maybe sleeping so close to each other meant the dream he got was much more vivid than usual, meant that he could really make out what was happening. Meant that his own dream of the beach and pyramid could actually affect Lee’s, lead him to a dream of the two of them on the beach as well.

He’d heard tales of soulmates connected by dreams, but had never personally known anyone else who had that, and certainly didn’t know a pair that had found eachother, their dreams connecting them. And soulmate bonds were so personal, even similar bonds could be so, so different from pair to pair.

He was flying blind.

He dropped into his rack and it took him too long to fall back asleep, hating that he’d left Lee’s side after he made that promise.

 

* * *

 

Helo walked back into the hospital before he was scheduled for duty in the morning. He had to at least see Lee, even if he hadn’t yet figured out what he could say.

The old man was already there, talking softly as Lee looked up and answered as best as he could. Helo could see the exhaustion around the corners of Lee, even from across the room, and certainly Adama could too.

Lee’s gaze wandered over to where Helo stood and the captain’s cheek quirked up in a smile. It was a small movement, but Adama turned to look at what had made Lee smile.

“Lieutenant Agathon,” he said, just an acknowledgement, and Helo saluted back, but stepped no closer. He clearly wasn’t invited into this- Adama was there not as Commander but as a father, and Helo didn’t belong in their family. If Starbuck was here, she would be free to go closer, he was sure, but Helo was still just a pilot to Adama, as much as anyone was just a pilot to the commander.

He stood there for a few minutes that stretched into five, then ten. He had time, he didn’t mind.

Adama finally stood from the chair and gave Lee’s hand a gentle pat before going. He nodded at Helo again, off to go run the ship.

Helo didn’t run, exactly, but he didn’t waste time getting to the same chair the commander had just left. “Hope you don’t mind I came back,” he said softly.

“I minded that you left,” Lee answered, sounding sassy like they were old friends. They had met what, two months ago now?

Longer, if you counted the dreams.

“Cottle kicked me out after I’d fallen asleep in here.”

“I didn’t mind you staying.” Lee shrugged, and Helo reached out and put his hand on the other’s. Lee turned his hand to give his a squeeze. “I think I slept better when you were here.”

Helo wanted to say something. Was Lee trying to tell him? He had to know, had to be as sure as he was. But if he was wrong- frak. He wasn’t wrong, though.

“I think I did, too.”

“I’d say that’s a lie.”

“Oh?”

“I don’t have the nicest dreams. You oughta… I wish you didn’t have to see the crash.”

Helo bit back a smile and shrugged. “I feel like I would have seen it whether I was here or not. When I was here last night-“

“My dreams changed to yours, almost.”

“I’ve never been able to tell who was in the dreams before. It was… strange, seeing myself next to where I was sitting.”

“You looked good in that swimsuit, though.”

“You flirting with me?”

Lee winked. “Probably. Or maybe it’s just the pain meds.”

The meds. Helo had feared yesterday that Lee was saying more than he ought to, but now he was sure. Lee wouldn’t act like this without all the meds- frak, he’d never even called him “Karl” before, they’d kept the formalities even when they were getting close. Helo sighed and shifted his weight backwards, no longer leaning in towards Lee, and he pulled his hand back. “Yeah, the pain meds,” he echoed.

“I didn’t mean that, come on,” Lee answered, straining his neck to try and sit up and get closer, but it was a losing fight. The most he could do was move his one mercifully uninjured hand towards Helo, let his fingers brush over where Helo had set his hand on the railing by the bed. “You feel that spark, right?”

It was like the first day in the rec room, when Helo was sure it was a function of the amount of whiskey he’d had after being sober for so long on Caprica. The same as the later nights, when he was sober and sure that Lee didn’t feel the same, not when his face was so still when they managed to touch.

“I’ve seen your dreams for years. Seen the beaches, the boats, the adventures you dreamed of when you were little. I figured out that you joined the Fleet a year after me. Saw the nightmares on Caprica.”

Helo flinched at the one. He’d always hoped that somehow, his dreams didn’t quite carry over to Lee, or anyone for that matter, once he was in that post-apocalyptic wasteland. No one should have to see that. He didn’t want to see it at night, certainly, and when he’d been able to see his soulmate’s dreams- Lee’s- it had been a relief.

“I saw it all,” Lee finished, staring down Helo. His expression had softened at the flinch, like he could read plain that the reminder of Caprica hadn’t been a welcome intrusion into this moment. But his eyes were glassy, he wasn’t focusing the way he ought to. His speech was slow.

“You’re on pain meds,” Helo answered, and debated getting up. But Lee’s fingers were still against his hand, and he reached out and took Lee’s hand in his own and gave him a reassuring squeeze in spite of himself. “You’re saying… more than you’d say. You wouldn’t-“

“Maybe I wouldn’t. Doesn’t change that it’s true.”

Helo didn’t have an answer to that one, could just stare back into Lee’s eyes. “What would your father say? Will this make him proud?”

“You kidding?”

“That was what you wanted for so long. I could see him, a man in a Fleet uniform, and could feel what you wanted. You wanted to be enough for him.” It had changed in the last few years, sure, and after meeting the Adamas and knowing who they were, it wasn’t that straightforward, but the dreams like that hadn’t faded entirely. Helo knew that the old man’s opinion couldn’t just be overlooked, that it absolutely mattered.

“He… he’d want me happy.”

Helo cringed at the difference there, what went unsaid. He didn’t pull away, though, and leaned in to press a kiss to the back of Lee’s hand.

“I never went looking for my soulmate,” Helo murmured. “But I’m damn glad I found you.”

“I never knew how to find you,” Lee answered. “I would have gone to you if I’d known how.”

They lapsed into an easy conversation, soft words that wouldn’t disturb the next bed over, past the thin curtains. Helo was just about to get up to get them both some lunch when the usual call came over the speakers- _action stations, action stations._ It sent his heart racing just as it had the first time he’d heard it, and from the monitor on Lee, it clearly did the same for the CAG.

Lee’s hand in his squeezed as hard as it could. “Good hunting,” he said softly, then bit back a smile. “And good luck.”

“Worst that could happen is I end up next to you, yeah?” The look Lee gave him for such a flippant and untrue statement sent shivers down his spine. “I’ll be safe, don’t worry. I’m not leaving so soon after meeting you proper.”

“Better not.”

Karl pulled his hand out from Lee’s and turned to rush off to his station, sparing just one glance back before he turned into the hallway.

It was strange, having something to live for again, instead of just dreams that one day he’d find something worthwhile.


End file.
